Lin-Manuel Miranda, director of musical biography Tick, Tick... Boom! has cast Andrew Garfield in the lead role of late composer Jonathan Larson. The film will be based on the autobiographical stage musical of the same name written by Larson that documents his struggles to establish himself in musical theatre.
Larson is best remembered as the creator of Rent, a highly popular ‘90s rock musical (later adapted as a film) that charts the lives of impoverished Bohemians trying to make a life for themselves in Manhattan’s East Village in the ‘80s, while living under the looming specter of the AIDS epidemic that destroys lives indiscriminately. Larson died tragically in January 1996, the night before the musical opened Off Broadway to rave reviews and enthused audiences, and never saw the sensation his creation became.
As reported by Deadline, Andrew Garfield will play Tick, Tick... Boom!’s lead role, for which he has been eyed for several months since Netflix won a bidding war for the rights to the film. The story revolves around Jon, who between shifts as a waiter writes a musical he hopes will grant him the big career break he longs for. His best friend has abandoned acting for a high-paid executive office job, and his girlfriend, a dancer and ballet tutor, doesn’t romanticize the life of a starving artist and wants to leave New York and start a family. As Jon approaches his 30th birthday and is yet to realize his dream (the title referencing the feeling of his life counting down), he struggles with being able to justify the sacrifices it requires he and those around him make.
Miranda is best known as the creator of the stratospherically popular musical Hamilton, for which he has cited Rent as a major inspiration of his work, to the extent his first major work In the Heights has been described as a hip hop version of the ‘90s production. Tick, Tick Boom! will be Miranda’s feature debut, and his complete directorial debut if you don’t count Clayton’s Friends, a short film made he made as a teenager with high school friends.
Although Garfield is best known as his performances as Peter Parker from the mixed quality duo of The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he is no stranger to theater, having performed in the likes of Death of a Salesman and Angels in America, roles for which he won multiple awards and was nominated for even more. With Garfield being an accomplished stage actor in the film version of a stage production, in addition to the autobiographical nature of the story and Miranda’s noted passion for the work of Larson, it should result in the end product being true to the vision of its late creator.
Tick, Tick... Boom does not have an official release date yet.
Source: Deadline